“They want to buy a plant, enjoy it and take credit for it. And we’re OK with all of that,” he says.

Another significant trend is the demand for bigger plants in finished containers, ones that can be taken home from the store and placed in a prominent location where its beauty can be appreciated right away without having to wait weeks and weeks for immature plants to develop.

“People want choices, of course, but they don’t want so much choice that they feel overwhelmed or confused.

“The art of marketing to this new generation of consumers is to give them precisely what they want in one complete package.”

Pan American has been a leader in the horticultural industry for years by recognizing emerging trends early on and adapting to demand in ways that translate into high volume sales.

The nursery was one of the first to recognize 20 years ago that chain and big box stores were looking to get into the garden market.

Rather than resist the trend, Pan American worked closely with these stores to develop programs while at the same time creating new lines to keep independent garden centres happy and keep their competitive edge.

Today Pan American not only sells to all the major chain stores but also has recognized another evolving trend — consumers’ desire to buy plants online.

As a result, Pan American did more than $200,000 worth of sales last year selling plants online through the Costco website.

It sees this change in shopping habits as one that will continue and expand with more and more gardeners buying plants and garden supplies online.

“Consumers have been a little anxious about buying plants online but not any more,” says van Zanten.

“This is the way more and more gardeners will be doing their plant shopping in the future.”

And Pan American is keeping up with them through its creative marketing and attractive, focused packaging strategies.

Van Zanten says consumers also are insisting on more and more information about the plants they are buying ­— information they can digest quickly and take home with them for future reference.

In response, Pan American was one of the first in the industry to develop a more sophisticated labelling system.

“Once the customer has our plants in their hands, our goal is to answer all of their questions on the tag.”

The Pan American marketing strategy has also been skilfully honed to focus specific categories of plants in attractive ways.

For instance, the nursery was the first in B.C. to team up with plant specialist Anthony Tesselaar to market his exceptionally popular Flower Carpet roses, a series that since its introduction in the 1990s has gone viral around the world with tens of millions of Flower Carpet roses being sold.

Most people don’t know, however, that the original Flower Carpet rose was brought to Canada from Germany by van Zanten’s father and tested in a garden in Summerland.

Tesselaar, a cousin, spotted the rose, immediately realized its potential, and took it to Australia to develop it into what has become one of the most successful series in the history of roses.

Pan American’s grip on the rose market in Canada has been further extended by its recent creative promotion of what it calls “Clean ’n’ Easy roses” featuring hardy, disease-resistant, fuss-free cultivars, many of which were developed at the illustrious Kordes Nursery in Germany.

Today Pan American sells more than 750,000 roses across Canada every year.

As well, it also sells tens of thousands of perennials, shrubs, vines, seed potatoes, onion-sets and assorted small-fruit-bearing plants under the brand name Windmill.

It is a vastly expanded inventory compared to the 1960s when Dutch immigrant brothers John and Ted van Zanten bought Pan American as an existing bulb-import company from former B.C. Premier Bill Vander Zalm.

“At that time, we were strictly a bulb business, but by the ’70s we had expanded into other product areas, particularly bare-root roses.”

Pan American has grown in leaps and bounds through the decades, going from four employees and a small 7,500 square foot warehouse on 1.5 acres of land in the ’60s, to 40 full-time staff and 150,000 square feet of warehouse space and more than 500,000 square feet of greenhouse space and 125 acres of space used for container plants and field production.

In addition to the facilities at its headquarters at 152nd Street in Surrey, the company has a second facility in Millgrove, Ontario, which allows Pan American to service the whole of Eastern Canada and also reach into the U.S., especially consumers in and around New York.

“Our success can be attributed to strong family values that have been passed down from generation to generation,” says Rob van Zanten.

“We really believe you should treat your customer exactly how you would want to be treated. This means delivering product to them that you would be happy to receive yourself. Strong customer relationship is the core of what we stand for as a company.”

Pan American sees the “finished container” market — with plants already grown to perfection and in full flower in lightweight containers, all ready to go — as the strongest new trend in the garden business.

“Five years ago, I didn’t think I would own an electric car, take catalogue-quality photos on my phone and sell plants online. The future is fast and furious,” van Zanten says.

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